There were three women in the dressing-room. Little Miss Macy, who played a subaltern, was pulling off her uniform; and the "Duchess," divested of velvet, stood brushing the powder out of her hair. The third woman was doing nothing. In a chair by the theatrical hamper labelled "Miss Olive Westland\'s Tour: \'The Foibles of Fashion\' Co.," she sat regarding the others, her hands idle in her lap. She was scarcely what is called "beautiful," much less was she what ought to be called "pretty"; perhaps "womanly" came nearer to suggesting her than either. Her eyes were not large, but they were so pensive; her mouth was not small, but it curved so tenderly; the face was not regular, but it looked so deliciously soft. Somebody had once said that it "made him admire God"; in watching her, it seemed such a perfect thing that there should be a low white brow, and hair to shade it; it seemed such an exquisite and consummate thing that there should be lips where the Maker put lips, and a chin where the chin is modelled. Her age might have been twenty-seven, also it might have been thirty. The wise man does not question the nice woman\'s age—he just thanks Heaven she lives; and she in the chair by the hamper was decidedly nice. Other women said so.

"Have you been in front, Mrs. Carew?" asked the "Duchess."

She answered that she had. "I came round at the end. It was a very good house; the business is improving."

"I should think," remarked the "subaltern," reaching for her skirt, "you must know every line of the piece, the times you\'ve seen it! But, of course, you\'ve nothing else to do."

"No, it isn\'t lively sitting alone all the evening in lodgings; and it\'s more comfortable in the circle than behind. How you people manage to get dressed in some of the theatres puzzles me; I look at you from the front, remembering where your things were put on, and marvel. If I were in the profession, my salary wouldn\'t keep me in the frocks I ruined."

"I wonder Carew has never wanted you to go into it."

The nice woman laughed.

"Go into the profession!" she exclaimed—"I? Good gracious, what an idea! No; Tony has a very flattering opinion of his wife\'s abilities, but I don\'t think even he goes the length of fancying I could act."

"You\'d be as good as a certain leading lady we know of, at any rate. Nobody could be much worse than our respected manageress, I\'ll take my oath!"

"Jeannie," said the "Duchess" sharply, "don\'t quarrel with your bread-and-butter!"

"I\'m not," said the girl; "I\'m criticising it—a very different matter, my dear. I hate these amateurs with money, even if they do take out companies and give shops to us pros. She queers the best line I\'ve got in the piece every night because she won\'t speak up and nobody knows what it\'s an answer to. The real type of the \'confidential actress\' is Miss Westland; no danger of her allowing anyone in the audience to overhear what she says!"

"Tony believes she\'ll get on all right," said Mrs. Carew, "when she has had more experience. You do, too, don\'t you, Mrs. Bowman?"

The "Duchess" replied vaguely that "experience did a great deal." She had profited by her own, and at the "aristocratic mother" period of her career no longer canvassed in dressing-rooms the capabilities of the powers that paid the treasury.

"Get on?" echoed Jeannie Macy, struggling into her jacket, "of course she\'ll get on; she has oof! If it\'s very much she\'s got, you\'ll see her by-and-by with a theatre of her own in London. Money, influence, or talent, you must have one of the three in the profession, and for a short-cut give me either of the first two. Sweet dreams, both of you; I\'ve got a hot supper waiting for me, and I can smell it spoiling from here!" The door banged behind her; and Mrs. Carew turned to the "Duchess" with a smile.

"You\'re coming round to us afterwards, aren\'t you?" she said.

"Yes, Carew asked the husband in the morning: I hope he\'s got some coppers; I reminded him. It\'s such a bother having to keep an account of how we stand after every deal. We\'ll be round about half-past twelve. Are you going?"

"I should think Tony ought to be ready by now. You remember our number?"

"Nine?"

"Nine; opposite the baker\'s."

Mrs. Carew hummed a little tune, and made her way down the stairs. The stage, of which she had a passing view, was dark, for the foot-lights were out, and in the T-piece only one gas-jet flared bluely between the bare expanse of boards and the blackness of the empty auditorium. In the passage, a man, hastening from the star-room, almost ran against her; Mr. Seaton Carew still wore the clothes in which he finished the play, and he had not removed his make-up yet.

"What!" she cried, "haven\'t you changed? How\'s that? What have you been doing?"

"I\'ve been talking to Miss Westland," he explained hurriedly. "There was something she wanted to see me about. Don\'t wait any longer, Mary; I\'ve got to go up to her lodgings with her."

She hesitated a moment, surprised.

"Is it so important?" she asked.

"Yes," he said; "I\'ll tell you about it later on; I want to have a talk with you afterwards. I shan\'t be long."

Whenever she came to the theatre, which was four or five times a week, they, naturally, returned together, and she enjoyed the stroll in the fresh air, "after the show," with Tony. Three years\' familiarity with the custom had not destroyed its charm to her. To-night she went out into the Leicester streets a shade disconsolately. The gas was already lighted when she reached the house, and a fire—for the month was March—burnt clearly in the grate. The accommodation was not extensive: a small ground-floor parlour, and a bedroom at the back. On the parlour mantelpiece were some faded photographs of people who had stayed there —Mr. Delancey as the Silver King; Miss Ida Ryan, smoking a cigarette, as Sam Willoughby. She took off her coat, and, turning her back on the supper-table, wondered what the conference with Miss Westland was about.

The tedium of the delay began to tell upon her. The landlady had brought in her book of testimonials during the afternoon, to ask Mr. and Mrs. Carew for theirs; and fetching it from where it lay, she began listlessly to turn the leaves. These books were abominated by Carew, for he never knew what to write; and, perusing the comments in this one, she mentally agreed with him that it was not easy to find a medium between curtness and exaggeration. Some she recognised, knowing before she looked what signatures were appended. The "Stay but a little, I will come again" quotation she had seen above the same name in a score of lodgings, and there were two or three "impromptus" in rhyme that she had met before.

She had been very happy this time at Leicester. They had arrived on the anniversary of her and Tony\'s first meeting, and she had felt additionally tender towards him all the week. The landlady had not effected the happiness certainly, but her lodger was quite willing to give her some of the benefit of it. She dipped the pen in the ink, and wrote in a bold, upright hand, "The week spent in Mrs. Liddy\'s apartments will always be a pleasant remembrance to Mr. and Mrs. Seaton Carew." Then she put the date underneath.

She had just finished when Mrs. Liddy entered with the beer. The Irishwoman said that she was going to bed, but that Mrs. Carew would find more glasses in the cupboard when her friends came. She supposed that that was all?

It was now twelve o\'clock, and Mrs. Carew, with an occasional glance at the cold beef and the corner of rice pudding, began to walk about the room. Presently she stopped and listened. A whistle had reached her from outside—the whistle of eight notes that is the actor\'s call. She surmised that young Dolliver had forgotten their number, as he did in every town. She drew aside the blind and let the light shine out. Young Dolliver it was.

"I\'ve been whistling all up and down the road," he said, aggrieved; "what were you doing?"

"Well, that isn\'t bad," she laughed. "Why don\'t you remember addresses like anybody else?"

"Can\'t," he declared; "never could! Never know where I\'m staying myself if I don\'t make a note of it as soon as I go in. In Jarrow, one Monday, I had to wander all over the place for three\' mortal hours in the pouring rain, looking for someone in the company to tell me where I lived. Hallo! where\'s Carew?"

"He\'ll be in directly," she said. "Sit down."

"Oh! I\'m awfully sorry to have come so early," he exclaimed; "why, you haven\'t fed or anything."

He was a bright-faced boy, with a cheery flow of chatter, and she was glad he had appeared.

"I expect the Bowmans any minute," she assured him; "you aren\'t early. Do sit down, there\'s a good child, and don\'t stand fiddling your hat about; put it on the piano! Have you banqueted yourself?"

"To repletion. What did you think of Carew\'s notice in the Great Sixpennyworth on Saturday? Wasn\'t it swagger? \'The r?le finds an ideal exponent in Mr. Seaton Carew, an actor who is rapidly making his way into the foremost ranks of his profession\'!"

"A line and a half," she said, "by a provincial correspondent! I shan\'t be satisfied till—— well!"

"I know—till you see him with sixteen lines all to himself in the Telegraph! No more will he, I fancy. He\'s red-hot on success, is Carew—do anything for it. So\'m I; I should like to play Claude."

"Claude?" she exclaimed. "Why, you\'re funny!"

"Not by disposition," he declared. "Miss Westland is responsible for my being funny. When they said \'a small comedy-part is still vacant,\' I said small comedy-parts are my forte of fortes! Had it been an \'old man\' that was wanted, I should have professed myself born to dodder. But if it comes to choice—to the secret tendency of the sacred fire—I am lead, I am romantic, I have centre-entrances in the limelight. Look here: \'A deep vale, shut out by Alpine——\' No, wait a minute; you do the Langtry business and let the flowers fall, while I \'paint the home.\' Do you know, my private opinion is that Claude only took those lessons so that the widow shouldn\'t be put to any expense doing up the home. Haven\'t got any flowers? Anything else then—where are the cards?"

He found the pack on the sideboard, and pushed a few into her hand.

"These\'ll do for the flowers," he said; "finger \'em lovingly; think you\'re holding a good nap.

"Don\'t be so ridiculous!"

"I\'m not," said Dolliver, with dignity; "I really want to hear your views on my reading. Where was I—er—er——

"\'Near a clear lake margin\'d by fruits of gold
And whispering myrtles; glassing softest skies
As cloudless, save with rare and roseate shadows....
As I would have thy fate.\'

"You see I make a pause after \'shadows\'—I\'m natural. I gaze hesitatingly at the floats, and the borders, and a kid in the pit. Then I meet the eyes of the fair Pauline, and conclude with \'As I would have thy fate,\' smiling dreamily at the excellence of the comparison. That\'s a new point, I take it?"

He was seriously enamoured of his "new point," and was still expatiating on it when they heard Carew unlocking the street-door.

It was a man much of the woman\'s own age who came in. His face was clean-shaven, and his hair was worn a trifle longer than the hair of most men. Now that he was seen in a good light, it was plain that he was disturbed; but he shook Dolliver by the hand as if relieved to find him there.

"What, not had supper? You must be starving, Mary?"

"I am pretty hungry," she admitted; "aren\'t you?"

"Well, I\'ve had something—still, I\'ll come to the table." She had looked disappointed, and he drew his chair up. "Dolliver?"

"Nothing for me, thanks. Oh! a glass of beer—I don\'t object to that."

Despite her assertion, Mary made no great progress with her supper, and Carew\'s evident disquietude even damped the garrulity of the boy. It was not until the Bowmans arrived and a game of napoleon had been begun, that the faint restraint caused by his manner wore away.

Mr. Bowman, mindful of his wife\'s injunction, had provided himself with several shillings\'-worth of coppers, and, profiting by his forethought, each of the party started with a rouleau of pence. These occasional card parties after the performance had become an institution in "The Foibles of Fashion" company, and it was seldom that anyone found them expensive. Mary\'s capital, coppers included, was half a sovereign, and to have won or lost such a sum as that at a sitting would have been the subject of allusion for a month. To-night, however, the luck was curiously unequal, and, to the surprise of all, Dolliver found himself losing seven shillings before he had been playing half an hour. Much sympathy was expressed for Dolliver.

"Never mind, dear boy; it\'s always a mistake to win early in the evening," said Carew. "There\'s plenty of time. I pass!"

"Pass," said the "Duchess."

Mary called three, and made them.

"How do you stand, Mrs. Carew?" asked Bowman.

"I\'m just about the same as when we began. Tony, Mr. Bowman has nothing to drink.—Oh, what a shame, Dolliver!—thanks! Fill up your own, won\'t you?—He\'s a perfect martyr, this boy," she went on; "he cleared the table before you two people came in—didn\'t you?"

"Four!" cried Dolliver. "Yes; I cleared it beautifully. Utility is my line of business."

"Since when? I thought just now——"

"Oh, confidences, Mrs. Carew!" He turned scarlet. "Don\'t give me away!... Now, Mrs. Bowman, which is it to be?"

She played trumps, and led with a king.

A breathless moment, crowned by an unsuspected "little one" from Dolliver. His "four" were safe, and he leant back radiant.

The "Duchess" prepared to deal.

"Who\'s got an address for the next town?" she inquired.

"Haven\'t you written yet?"

"No, we haven\'t got a place to write to; hateful, isn\'t it? If there\'s a thing I loathe, it\'s having to look for rooms after we get in. We\'ve —pass!—always stayed in the same house, and—everybody to put in the kitty again!—and now the woman\'s left, or something. My! isn\'t the kitty getting big—look at all those sixpences underneath. Somebody count it!"

"Now then, Carew, don\'t go to sleep!"

Carew, thus adjured, gathered up the cards. Fitfully he was almost himself again, and only Mary was really sure that anything was amiss.

"There\'s a little hotel I\'ve stopped at there," he said. "Not at all bad—they find you everything for twenty-five bob the week; for two people there\'d be a reduction, too. Remind me, and I\'ll give you the name; I have it in my book. Bowman, you to call!"

Bowman called nothing; everybody passed again, and the kitty was augmented once more.

"What time do we travel Sunday—anybody know?"

"You can be precious sure," said Bowman, "that it will be at some unearthly hour. I\'ve had a good many years\' experience in the profession, but I never in my life was in a company where they did so many night journeys as they do in this one. I believe that little outsider arranges it on purpose!"

"A daisy of an acting-manager, isn\'t he? I once knew another fellow much the—two, I call two—and then, at the end of the tour, hanged if they didn\'t rush us for a presentation to him!"

"So they will for this chap. Presentations in the profession, upon my soul, are the——"

"Three," said the "Duchess."

"And when the time comes, not a member of the crowd will have the pluck to refuse. You see!"

"Did you ever know an actor who had, when he was asked?"

Dolliver flushed excitedly.

"Nap!" he exclaimed.

"Oh, oh, oh! Dolliver goes nap!"

"No; d\'ye mean it? Very well, fire ahead, then; play up!"

There was two minutes\' silence, and the youngster smacked down his last card, preparing a smile for defeat.

"He\'s made it! Mrs. Bowman, you threw it away; if you\'d played hearts, instead——"

"No, no, she couldn\'t help it. She had to follow suit."

"Of course!"—the "Duchess" caught feebly at the explanation—"I had to follow suit. What a haul! good gracious!"

"That puts you right again, eh, dear boy?"

"\'I am once more the great house of Lyons!\'" remarked Dolliver, piling up the pennies. "Six, seven, eight! Look at the silver, great Scott! Mrs. Carew, there\'s the ninepence I owe you."

"\'I have paid this woman, and I owe her nothing,\'" quoted Carew. "Dolliver, you\'ve ruined me, you beggar! Where\'s the \'bacca?"

At something to three there was a murmur about its being late, but the loser now was Mrs. Bowman, and as her shillings had drifted into the possession of Mary, the hostess said it really was not late at all.\' This disposed of the breaking-up question for half an hour. Then Bowman began to talk of concluding the game after a couple of rounds. When two such arrangements had been made and set at naught, the "Duchess" proposed that they should finish at the next "nap." To "finish at the next nap" was a euphemism for continuing for a good: long while, and the resolution was carried unanimously.

The clock had struck four when the nap was made, and the winner was Mary. She had won more than six shillings, and the "Duchess," who was the poorer by the amount, smiled with sleepy resignation.

"You had the luck after all, Mrs. Carew," laughed Dolliver. "Good-night."

"Yes," she said carelessly; "I\'ve made something between me and the workhouse, anyhow! Good-night."

She loitered about the room, putting little aimless touches to things, while Carew saw the trio to the door. She heard him shut it behind them, and heard their steps growing fainter on the pavement. He was slow returning, queerly slow. Dolliver\'s voice reached her, taking leave of the Bowmans at the corner, and still he had not come in.

"Tony!" she called.

He rejoined her almost as she spoke.

"Don\'t go to bed, Mary," he said huskily; "I\'ve something to say to you."

"What is it?" she asked.

He hesitated for an instant, seeking an introductory phrase. The agitation that he had been fighting all the night had conquered him.

"My release has come at last," he answered. "My wife is dead."

"Dead?"

She stood gazing at him with dilated eyes, the colour ebbing from her cheeks.

"She was ill some time. Drink it was, I hear; I daresay! Anyhow, she\'s gone; the mistake is finished. I\'ve paid for it dearly enough, Lord knows!"

He had paused midway between her and the hearth, and he moved to the hearth. She was sensible of a vague pang as he did so. A tense silence followed his words. In thoughts that she had been unable to escape, the woman who had paid for his mistake more dearly still had sometimes imagined such a moment as this—had sometimes foreseen him crying to her that he was free. Perhaps, now that the moment was here, it was a little wanting—a little barer than the announcement of freedom that she had pictured.

"You\'re bound to feel the shock of it," she said, almost inaudibly. "It\'s always a shock, the news of death." But she felt that the burden of speech should be his. "Were you—used you to be very fond of her? Does it come back?"

"I was twenty. \'Fond\'? I don\'t know. I wasn\'t with her three months when——She had walked Liverpool; I never saw her from the day I found it out. She didn\'t want me; the money was enough for her—to be sure of it every week!"

His attitude remained unchanged, his hands thrust deep into his trouser-pockets. Opposite each other, both reviewed the past. She waited for him to come to her—to touch her. Yes, the reality was barer than the picture that she had seen.

"When was it?" she murmured.

"It was some weeks ago."

"So long?"

He left the hearth moodily, and began to pace the room from end to end. The woman did not stir. The memory was with her of the morning that he had avowed this marriage—of the agony that had wept to her for pity—of the clasp that would not let her go. She looked abstractedly at the fire; but in her heart she saw his every step, and counted the turns that kept him from her side.

"It makes a great difference!" he said abruptly.

The consciousness of the difference was flooding her reason, yet she did not speak. It should not be by her that the sanctification of her sacrifice was broached. The wish, the reminder, the reparation, all should be his! She nodded assent.

"A great difference," he repeated hoarsely. He smeared the dampness from his mouth and chin. "If—if my reputation were made now, Mary, I should ask you to be my wife."

And then she did not speak. There was an instant in which the wall swam before her in a haze, and the floor lurched. In the next, she was still fronting the fireplace; she was staring at it with the same intentness of regard; and his voice was sounding again, though she heard it dully:

"—while a poor due can\'t choose! I would—I\'d ask you to marry me. I know what you\'ve been to me—I don\'t forget—I know very well! But, as it is, it\'d be madness—it\'d be putting a rope round my own neck. I want you to hear how I\'m situated. I want you to listen to the circumstances——"

"You won\'t ... make amends?"

"I tell you I\'m not my own master."

"You tell me that—that we\'re to part! We can\'t remain together any longer unless I\'m your wife."

"We can\'t remain together any longer at all; that\'s what I\'m coming to." He went back to the mantelpiece, and leant his elbows on it, kicking the half-hot coals. "I\'m going to marry Miss Westland!"

He had said it; the echo of the utterance sung in his ears. Behind him her figure was motionless—its its—stillness frightened him. Intensified by the riotous ticking of the clock, through which his pulses were strained for the relief of a rustle, a breath, the pause grew unendurable.

"For God\'s sake, why don\'t you say something?" he exclaimed. He faced her impetuously, and they looked at each other across the table. "Mary, it\'s my chance in life! She cares for me, don\'t you see? You think me a scoundrel—don\'t you see what a chance it is? What can I come to as I am? With her—she\'ll get on, she has money—I shall rise, I shall be a manager, I shall get to London in time. Mary!"

"You\'re going to ... marry Miss Westland?"

"I must," he said.

For the veriest second it was as if she struggled to understand. Then she threw out her hands dizzily, crying out.

"That is what your love was, then—a lie, a shameful lie?"

"It wasn\'t; no, Mary, it was real! I cared for you—I did; the thing is forced on me!"

"\'Cared\'? when you use your liberty like this? You \'cared\'? And I pitied you—you wrung the soul of me with your despair—I forgave you keeping back the tale so long. I came to you to be your wife, and you went down on your knees and vowed you hadn\'t had the courage to tell me before, but your wife was living—some awful woman you couldn\'t divorce. I gave myself to you, I became the thing you can turn out of doors, all because I loved you, all because I believed in your love for me." She caught at her throat. "You deserved it, didn\'t you?—you justify it now so nobly, the faith that has made me a ——"

"Mary!"

"Oh, I can say it!" she burst forth hysterically. "I am, you know; you have made me one—you and your \'love\'! Why shouldn\'t I say it?"

"I told you the truth; if I had been free at that time——"

"When did you hear the news of the death? Answer me—it wasn\'t to-night?"

"What\'s the difference," he muttered, "when I heard?"

"Oh!" she moaned, "go away from me, don\'t come near me! You coward!"

She sank on to the edge of the sofa, rocking herself to and fro. The man roamed aimlessly around. Once or twice he glanced across at her, but she paid no heed. His pipe was on the sideboard; he filled it clumsily, and drew at it in nervous pulls.

He was the first to speak again.

"I know I seem a hound, I know it all looks very bad; but I don\'t suppose there\'s a man in five hundred who would refuse such an opportunity, for all that. No, nor one in five thousand, either! You won\'t see it in an unprejudiced light, of course; but it seems to me—yes, it does, and I can\'t help saying so—that if you were really as fond of me as you think, if my interests were really dear to you, you yourself \'d counsel me to leap at the chance, and, what\'s more, feel honestly glad that a prospect of success had come in my way.... You know what it means to me," he went on querulously; "you have been in the profession—at least, as good as in the profession—three years; you know that, in the ordinary course of events, I should never get any higher than I am, never play in London in my life. You know I\'ve gone as far as I can ever expect to go without influence to back me, that in ten years\' time I should be exactly what I am now, a leading-man for second-rate tours; and that ten years later I should be playing heavy fathers, or Lord knows what, still on the road, and done for—the fire all spent, wasted and worn out in the provinces. That\'s what it would be; you\'ve heard me say it again and again; and I should go on seeing Miss Somebody\'s son, and Mr. Somebody-else\'s-daughter, with their parents\' names to get them the engagements, playing prominent business in London theatres before they\'ve learnt how to walk across a stage. Miss Westland\'s a fine-looking girl, and she knows a lot of Society people in town; and she has money enough to take a theatre there when she\'s lost her amateurishness a bit. Right off I shall be somebody, too—I shall manage her affairs. I\'ll have a big ad. in The Era every week: \'For vacant dates apply to Mr. Seaton Carew!\' Oh, Mary, it\'s such a chance, such a lift! I am fond of you, you know I am; I care more for your little finger than for that woman\'s body and soul. Don\'t think me callous; it\'s damnable I\'ve got to behave so—it takes all the light, all the luck, out of the thing that the way to it is so hard. I wish you could know what I\'m feeling."

"I think I do know," she said bitterly—"better than you, perhaps. You\'re remembering how easily you could have taken the luck if your prayers to me had failed. And you\'re angered at me in your heart because the shame you feel spoils so much of the pleasure now."

He was humiliated to recognise that this was true. Her words described a mean nature, and his resentment deepened.

"When did you tell Miss Westland?" she faltered.

"Tell her?"

"What I am. That I\'m not——When was it?"

"This evening. It won\'t make any awkwardness for you; I mean, she won\'t speak of it to any of the others. Nobody will know for——"

"The whole company may know to-morrow!" she answered, drying her eyes. "Seeing that I shall be gone, they may as well know to-morrow as later. Oh, how they will talk, all of them, how they\'ll talk about me—the Bowmans, and that boy, too!"

"You\'ll be gone to-morrow—what do you say?"

"Do you suppose——"

"Mary, there are—I must make some—good heavens! how will you go?—where? Mary, listen: by-and-by, when something is settled, in—in a month or more—I want to arrange to send—I couldn\'t let you want for money, don\'t you see!"

"I would not take a penny from you," she said, "not the value of a penny, if I were dying. I wouldn\'t, as Christ hears me! Our life together is over—I am going away."

He looked at her aghast.

"Now," he ejaculated, "at once? In the middle of the night?"

"Now at once—in the middle of the night."

"Be reasonable"—he caught her fingers, and held them in miserable expostulation—"wait till day, at any rate. You\'re beside yourself, there\'s nothing to be gained by it. In the morning, if you must——"

"Oh!" she choked, "did you think I would stop here an hour after this? Did you—did you think so? You man! Yes, I should be no worse to you I but to me, the lowness of it! All in a moment the lowness of it! I\'ve tried to feel that we were married; I always believed it was your trouble that I had to be what I was. If you had ever heard—as soon as it was possible, I thought every minute \'d have been a burden to you till you had made it all real and right. To stop with you now, the thing I am—despised—on sufferance——"

She dragged her hand from him and stumbled into the bedroom. There it was quite dark, and, shaking, she groped about for matches and the candle. A small bag, painted with the initials of "Mary Brettan," her own name, was under the toilet-table. She pulled it out, and, dropping on her knees before the trunk that held her clothes, hastily pushed in a little of the top-most linen. As she did so, her eyes fell on the wedding-ring that she wore. Painful at all times, the sight of it now was horrible. She strangled a sob, and, lifting the candlestick, peered stupidly around. By the parlour grate she could hear Tony knocking his pipe out on the bars. Above the washhand-stand a holland "tidy" contained her brushes; she rolled it up and crammed the bundle among the linen. In fastening the bag she hesitated, and looked irresolutely at the trunk. Going over to it, she paused again—left it; returned to it. She plunged her arm suddenly into its depths, and thrust the debated thing into her bag as if it burnt her. Across the photographer\'s address was written, "Yours ever, Tony." Her preparations for leaving him had not occupied ten minutes. Then she went back.

Her coat and hat lay by the piano where she had cast them when she came in from the theatre. The man watched her put them on.

"Here\'s your ring!" she said.

The tears were running down her cheeks; she dabbed at them with a handkerchief as she spoke. The baseness of it all was eating into him. Though the ardour of his earlier passion was gone and his protestations of affection had been insults, her loss and her aversion served to display the growth of a certain attachment to her of which her possession and her constancy had left him unaware. Twice a plea to her to remain rose to his lips, and twice his tongue was heavy from self-interest, and from shame. He followed her instinctively into the passage; his limbs quaked, and his soul was cowed. She had already opened the door and set her foot on the step.

"Mary!" he gasped.

It was just beginning to get light. Under the faint paling of the sky the pavements gleamed cold and grey, forlornly visible in the darkness.

"Mary, don\'t go!"

A rush of chill air swept out of the silence, raising the hair from her brow. The coat fell about her loosely in thick folds. He put out nervous hands to touch her, and nothing but these folds seemed assailable; they enveloped and denied her to him.

"Don\'t go," he stammered; "stay—forget what I\'ve done!"

She saw the impulse at its worth, but she was grateful for its happening. She knew that he would regret it if she listened, knew that he knew he would regret it. And yet, knowing and disdaining as she did, the gladfulness and thankfulness were there that he had spoken.

"I couldn\'t," she said—her voice was gentler; "there can never be anything between you and me any more. Good-bye, Tony."

She walked from him firmly. The receding figure was distinct—uncertain—merged in gloom. He stood gazing after it till it was gone——